Herran said nothing until he reached his allotted place, two yards before the lowest step. “My emperor.” And he slipped into the obeisance as if age had no finger on him. Indeed he looked more hale that he had at any point in the last year, his hair and eyebrows shaded away from their usual white to a new grey, though Sarmin would not have thought the man vain.
“Master Herran.” Sarmin scowled at the back of the old man’s head. “Your profession has done great harm this night.”
Herran said nothing.
“Rise.” Sarmin’s fingertips drummed his irritation out on the armrest. “Speak.”
Master Herran got to his knees, then showing at the last some sign of age, to his feet. “My emperor. It remains to be seen whether the envoy’s death is the work of skilled men or of amateurs with fortune on their side-I can assure you that the Grey Service were no part of this. The solution however may lie with the grey men in your service.”
“You will cut the throats of each and every Fryth in their bed and leave us none to war against? Is that your solution?” Some of that bitterness brewed in the long years of Sarmin’s imprisonment leaked into his voice.
“Only two more.” Herran inclined his head.
“Two? I don’t understand you. I won’t send you after the duke and his last remaining heir if that’s what you’re asking. I won’t have it.” Behind his eyes the pool of Kavic’s blood widened until it joined that which had spread around Sarmin’s brothers in the long ago.
Herran waited a moment, studying Sarmin as no servant should study his master. The assassin had pale eyes that together with the lines of his face spoke of a mixed ancestry, of blood from beyond Cerana’s borders. “If the envoy had never reached the palace, if ill luck had befallen him in the wild mountains where lawless tribes hold sway, then we would never have had this problem.”
“But ill luck didn’t befall them until they spent the night beneath my roofs!” Sarmin studied his fingers, looking for traces of blood.
Azeem coughed into his hand. “If we say they never reached us. If we send for word of their arrival… who will call us liars? Who will call the emperor of Cerana a liar?”
“Austere Adam, for one,” said Sarmin. “Besides, I am not a liar.”
Herran bowed his head. Azeem licked his lips and continued. “Would you lie to preserve the peace you seek, my emperor, to save the ten thousand lives you spoke of?”
Sarmin frowned. Mesema would know what to say to that. His mother would lie without pause for blinking, except that her pride would not incline her towards peace. “Austere Adam is not-”
“Austere Adam has not yet survived the night,” Herran said. “Ah.” Finally Sarmin understood. He did not count himself stupid, but his mind did not run so easily down the bloodier of paths. “No. I won’t order a priest slain.”
“We have places he might be held, along with that guardsman,” Azeem said. “Cells in the dungeon where men might be forgotten.” The oubliettes. Sarmin remembered the smoothness of that skull beneath his hands, the dry papery feel when he hooked his fingers through its eye sockets. “No! Not there. I commanded that every prisoner be brought out and the dungeons emptied.”
Azeem and Herran exchanged a look. The older man spoke. “Your royal father appointed Eyul son of Klemet to be the fifty-third Knife-Sworn. He found he needed such a man and that the Grey Service would not fill the need.”
“This I know. I watched the man slit my brothers’ throats. Your assassins are forbidden such blood. If he had been a true emperor my father would have killed his sons by his own hand, or let them live.”
“Emperor Tahal was dead by the time the deed was required.” A gentle reminder from Azeem.
“You need a Knife in your service, my emperor.” Herran’s pale eyes sought Sarmin’s.
“No.” Appointing a Knife was the penultimate step towards sacrificing his last brother. He might as well snatch Daveed from his mother’s arms and throttle him himself as put the emperor’s Knife into the hand of a new Knife-Sworn.
“It is not just for the spilling of royal blood that the Knife serves, Sarmin. The Knife serves the empire. The Knife dares what must be done, what needs be done, what honest men and good men cannot bring themselves to say or to command. The hand that wields the Knife is stained; the emperor’s remain clean.
“Your father appointed Eyul because he trusted him, with his own life, with the black judgements that taint a man and yet must be made. Your father sacrificed Eyul to the Knife that the empire might survive, that the people within her borders might live and thrive.”
The Many began their whispering, the hush and flow of their words reaching from the darkest corners of Sarmin’s mind, rippling like the shadows across the throne room floor. “Your search is over before it starts then, assassin,” he said. “I’ve grown between four walls, alone, forgotten. Who would I trust as my father trusted Eyul? Who would I trust to kill in my name and not to ask my permission or tell me the result?” And if I had such a person how could I sacrifice them?
Herran turned away, towards the doors, and clapped twice. A figure stepped through with no announcement. Hooded, the visitor walked towards the throne, avoiding the silk runner, taking careful steps as if favouring an injury.
“Who-” The herald would announce every visitor without exception; only the guards entered without remark. The guards and servants.
Halfway to the throne the figure stopped. Further back than noble supplicants, further back than merchants or low ranked officers would halt, further back than the lowest of servants.
“Grada!” And as he spoke she threw her hood back and watched him with dark eyes. The Many whispered, they lifted their voices so Sarmin could hear neither assassin nor vizier. He saw both men though their words didn’t reach him-saw them in their many parts, their bright fault-lines, the way they fit the pattern all around them. Grada however, stood unmoving and did not speak, and no lines crossed her, she stood dark and whole her purpose clear, she fit only a single pattern, a puzzle of two parts, his and hers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DI kill Kavic? Did the Many kill him with these hands? Sarmin held his palms before him for inspection. No stain, no trace of blood. But someone inside him had made dust of the ropes that bound him to his bed. Someone had been free to do it. And envoy Kavic lay dead, the image of his spreading blood seared on Sarmin’s mind like memory although only the killer would have seen it flow.
“Not memory,” he told the gods. “Imagination.” He had not killed Austere Adam. He had ordered him into the oubliettes instead: not what Sarmin wanted to do, but better than cutting the man’s throat.
Sarmin stood in the tower room where he had counted out his youth. Too many steps ached in his legs and they told him to sit, but he remained standing, eyes on the painted ceiling from where the gods looked down upon him.
A knock and Ta-Sann’s voice through the door. “My emperor?”
“Yes.”
“High Mage Govnan is here with… a servant.” Even Ta-Sann, who could cut through the niceties of court like a blade, had not the words for Grada.
“Let them come.” Sarmin stood, anticipation flowing through him. At last he and Grada would speak without the eyes of the court upon them.
Govnan walked in, hobbled with age but carrying no extra burden from the climb, Grada behind him, frowning, not even the hint of a smile when his eyes caught hers.
“Well?” Before Govan had even begun his slow descent into the obeisance.
The old man put his hands together, knuckles overlarge, skin patterned by age. “There was no magic in it.”
“But what did you discover?”
